Question & Answer with Jen

Q:

What is creative change?

A:

Creative change is a psychological process people undergo when they embrace new and productive definitions that often seem opposite the old. We can undergo creative change about how we define ourselves, a group of people, a product or a process.

Q:

Is creative change rare?

A:

Yes and no. We say we love creative ideas, but the sad truth is we resist embracing them, even when we want creativity and need it most. But it is possible for creative change to happen as often as you like. Opportunities to make creative change abound because you can make creative change in any aspect of your life. So if you learn to make creative change, you can enjoy all the benefits that truly creative solutions can bring. If you let it, creative change can happen often for you.

Q:

What are examples of creative changes?

A:

One creative change still going on right now is our embracing the shift from paper documents to online documentation without a physical copy. Another ongoing example is how people define women at work. The 1950s way of defining women was that women were communal and warm but NOT highly achievement oriented. There is a modern way of thinking about women that people with the 1950’s view would have to undergo creative change to embrace. The modern way defines women as communal AND high achieving. Organizations able to reject the old and embrace this new way of defining women are better able to attract and retain the best talent.

Q:

Is creative change something I can learn to do?

A:

Absolutely. Just like you can have expertise in a given domain (e.g., how to code in Java, chemical engineering) you can have expertise in creativity. But merely learning to generate creative ideas is not enough. Just because you can generate ideas does not mean you will use them, or use creative ideas developed by others. Further, merely generating an idea will not ensure you know how to get buy in from decision-makers either. Instead, embracing creative ideas is a process of managing your own and others psychological experience of uncertainty. Uncertainty is not just negative. It can be experienced positively (e.g., hope) or negatively (e.g., fear). Whether you can make yourself and others feel hope rather than anxiety around creative ideas is key to making creative change in your organization and in your life.

Q:

Does the book “Creative Change” have solutions to the problems raised?

A:

Yes! The book “Creative Change” contains processes around how to self-disrupt your mindset to better see value in creativity, influence others to use your creative solutions, build creative change into the fabric of your organization, recognize creative leaders, and generate creative ideas without diminishing your ability to make them count with decision-makers.

Q:

Why should I learn about creative change?

A:

a. You can be biased against creativity: Even if you are highly open to new ideas, my work shows you can still exhibit a bias against creative ideas under certain circumstances. Learning what those circumstances are can improve your ability to enhance your life in ways you never thought possible.

b. Creative change is a key leadership skill: Creativity may be the number one skill needed to lead – according to a panel of roughly 1500 leaders at IBM – but leadership books side-step how creativity and leadership relate. The book “Creative Change” fills this gap and identifies the creative skills leaders need to move companies in productive new directions. Creative change is the ability to embrace useful ways of redefining something (e.g., a product, process, service, one’s self). Leaders must recognize productive new directions, as opposed embracing visions that merely extrapolate out from the status quo. Leaders must overcome knee-jerk resistance others (and they themselves) have to the new. Leaders must build organizations able to benefit from and use the creative ideas produced.

c. Traditional selling practices can backfire when pitching creative ideas: Once you learn the psychology around making creative change – you will quickly see the pitfalls of trying to sell creative ideas using many traditional selling practices. The book “Creative Change” includes a framework you can use to sell creative ideas without evoking the status quo bias.

d. Being a decision-maker makes it harder to embrace creative change: New evidence shows that experts and gatekeepers have been floundering in confusion when trying to make creative change. My work explains this puzzle by showing that the way we structure decision-making roles and train people to evaluate creative ideas may evoke a bias against creativity – even when creative is desired. Our rejection of creativity may happen unawares. My work shows that when we are in a mindset which lacks tolerance for uncertainty we can associate creativity with words like vomit, even as we espouse to love and value creativity. My work links this intolerance for uncertainty to how we train today’s business leaders and educate students. Learning how to make creative change will allow you to overcome your own tendency to undervalue new ideas when you need them most.

e. Traditional innovation management practices can kill creativity: Traditional innovation management practices (e.g., stage gate processes, hierarchical decision-making) rely on the assumption that creative and familiar ideas can be evaluated using the same processes. This assumption is false and deadly for creative ideas. Learning how to make creative change will help you structure your organization to ensure the creativity you need the most isn’t systematically filtered out.